This is Hell!

Dad's back in the hospital. His toe was getting worst; he had a fever of 103, and infections throughout his body. On Monday, I was on the phone, while I at work, most of the morning with the facility trying to get them to get a doctor in to look at his toe. After several hours of talking about it, I got frustrated and said, "Have the doctor call me to assure me I'm worrying about nothing and dad's infected, black toe, and the fact he has a fever, isn't a big deal and I'll stop pushing (I wouldn't have stopped)." She said she would. Next thing I knew she was calling me back to say the doctor had looked at Dad's foot, saw that it was swollen and decided he needed to go back to the hosital. Really. Yesterday, we learned the cause of dad's infections was not the toe, but the fistula in his arm. His right arm is twice the size it should be, red and hot to touch. One of the doctors attending him sat us all down and explained that dad's situation was pretty dire and soon family would have to make a decision on whether to continue aggressive treatment. She also said that if they have to reopen the site of the fistula dad may not survive the procedure in his current state. She further added that the surgeon may not want to do the surgery due to the risk to dad. So we needed to wait for the vascular surgeon to examine dad.

So Debbie and I are sitting in dad's room when this guy that looks like Colonel Sanders walks in. He introduces himself, bends over and checks out dad's arm, then says, "So who did the surgery?" Huh?

I said, "You did. Last Thursday."

While we're still trying to figure out if he's joking or not he says, "So he's pretty sick huh?"

"Um, yeah" I say, "Because he has an infection going through his body caused by the fistula site." He continued to astound us.

"Yeah," he says. "Well, everything's okay. It's not infected." And then colonel Sanders started to walk out of the room.

Debbie stood and caught him before he made it to the door. "Why did the infectious disease doctor tell us the infection started with the fistula?"

Sanders says, "Because it's swollen and he's wrong. It's not infected."

Debbie and I say, "But the other doctor said it was."

Sanders said with a bit of impatience, "Well, I say it's not."

Today, the infectious disease doctor stopped by, checked dad's arm and recanted yesterday's diagnosis and said with purpose that he was in agreement with Colonel Sanders. The area of the fistula is not infected, he explaned, and the swelling is typical with a fistula procedure. O-kay.

And this is what we've been dealing with. One professional says this, the other says something completely different and they're all looking at us like we're purposely trying to be difficult. For what it's worth, we put in a complaint with regard to Colonel Sander's weird bedside manner. And again, for whatever it's worth, which is probably a whole lot of nothing, four different people have tried to convince us that Colonel Sander's is a brilliant surgeon but just has a bad bedside manner. For us, their assurance isn't worth a damn thing at this point.

And dad's toe is getting really ugly, and the infectious disease doctor said the tip of the toe will definitely need to be surgically removed, however they need to wait for the gangrene to stop spreading otherwise they will need to keep taking off pieces. Ah hell!